Artificial Intelligence (AI) has risen to the forefront of public discourse. The recent rise of big data and computational techniques have brought about new opportunities for participation, organizing and collective action by citizens. If the 20th century engineers of consent had magnifying glasses and baseball bats, those of the 21st century have acquired telescopes, microscopes and scalpels in the shape of algorithms and analytics. These new technologies hold incredible promise for human welfare. They hint at a future of individualized medicine and reduced pandemics, of globally disseminated knowledge and sustainable climate management, accelerated financial inclusion and entrepreneurship, and even asteroid mining. They offer us powerful new ways to achieve our shared commitments to each and every one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 socioeconomic, political and environmental objectives forming and structuring the development agenda of the next 11 years. Against this background, a question one may ask is: what role can algorithms play to make this world a better place? Can algorithms of the Big Data era, and the opportunities, risks and questions they raise, be leveraged as forces of positive disruption?